Beneficial Effects of Coculturing Synovial Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells with Meniscus Fibrochondrocytes Are Mediated by Fibroblast Growth Factor 1: Increased Proliferation and Collagen Synthesis

Figure 1

Coculture of SSCs and me-CH increases GAG formation and collagen biosynthesis. (a) Morphology of me-CH at passage 0 and passage 2. (b) Multilineage differentiation assay shows that SSCs are able to differentiate into osteoblast (osteogenic), adipocyte (adipogenic), and chondrocytes (chondrogenic). One representative donor is shown. (c) Alcian blue staining was performed at week 4 to detect GAGs. Scale bar = 100 μm. (d) Quantitative GAG assay shows more GAGs deposited in coculture aggregates than monocultures of either SSC or me-CH () at week 4. Error bar reflects standard deviation. (e) Total collagen contents were measured by hydroxyproline assay. The amount of hydroxyproline was expressed as μg/μg of DNA. . . values were calculated with one-way ANOVA followed by Dunnett’s test.

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